SPARROW
            Norman MacCaig
                p. 1973
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He's no artist.
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy.
And his nest--that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak,
would call it a slum.

To stalk solitary on lawns,
to sing solitary in midnight trees,
to glide solitary over gray Atlantics--
not for him: he'd rather
a punch-up in a gutter.

He carries what learning he has
lightly--it is, in fact, based only
on the usefulness whose result
is survival. A proletarian bird.
No scholar.

But when winter soft-shoes in
and these other birds--
ballet dancers, musicians, architects--
die in the snow
and freeze to branches,
watch him happily flying
on the O-levels and A-levels
of the air.


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** contributory thanks to Sam Droege **

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